It's no secret that Samsung spends a lot of cash on marketing it products, with its total marketing spend being more than the entire market value of other individual Android manufacturers. According to the Korean media, Samsung took its marketing costs to new heights this year – the company reportedly increased its sales promotion budget by 38.7 percent from last year, with 934 billion won (roughly US$889 million) spent on sales promotion during the first three quarters in its home country.
However, Samsung has also changed the way it markets products. The company reduced the investments in advertisements from last year's 1.71 trillion won (~ US$1.63 billion) to 695 billion won (US$661 million) – the money was instead spent on the aforementioned sales promotions, such as rebates, discounts and other incentives getting a higher focus compared to the ads we've come to expect (and in many cases, love) from the world's largest mobile manufacturer.
Will a reduced focus on ads mean Samsung's products don't sell as well as before? Not really, since even with the reduced advertising budget, Samsung still puts in more in ads than most other manufacturers combined, so the company doesn't exactly have much to worry about for the foreseeable future.